


Intelligent Designs

by AstroGirl



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Episode Related, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-01
Updated: 2009-12-01
Packaged: 2017-10-04 02:07:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstroGirl/pseuds/AstroGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The universe is the Rani's test tube.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Intelligent Designs

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Matrithon "women over 40" challenge, for the prompt, "The Rani, playing goddess." It's not what I originally thought I was going to write, but I made the mistake of re-watching "Time and the Rani," and felt a sudden need to try to make sense of the Rani's plan... in character terms, if not necessarily in scientific ones.

The Rani first came to love chemistry because chemistry is _tidy_. With sufficient knowledge, and with proper tools and techniques, the actions of chemicals can be perfectly predicted, perfectly controlled. Chemical compounds are simpler and less annoying to deal with than sentient beings, their laws infinitely less arbitrary. She has always found pleasure, even a strange form of comfort in laboratories, from the time she first set foot in one in the early days of her youth. Throughout her schooling, the more she was forced to spend her time studying other, less worthy subjects, and the more her most infamous classmates tried to involve her in their individual but equally pointless brands of chaos, the more she withdrew to seek satisfaction in the kind of order that exists only at the bottom of a test tube.

And yet biology also interests her, precisely because biology is _messy_. Time Lord biology less so than most, of course. Every cell in a Time Lord's body offers testament to the painstaking design of a bioengineer, sometime deep in Gallifrey's ahistoric past. Much of it is not as she herself would have chosen to fashion it, but clearly all of it was done with a coherent purpose in mind. Thus Time Lord biology behaves rationally for the most part, at least when the body is tended by a rational mind.

Regrettably, the same cannot be said for the rest of the universe. Evolution is interesting to observe, and its products are frequently useful and occasionally amusing. But it is a blind, bottom-up process, full of dead ends, inefficient ad hoc solutions, and valleys of unnecessary stagnation. It fascinates her, in precisely the way that members of lesser species are fascinated by freakish, dysfunctional mutations in their own kind.

But it does not need to be that way. It need not ever _have been_ that way.

From the first moment that thought came to her, so much time and so many preparations ago, it has never left her mind. No doubt many people -- that idiot the Doctor foremost among them -- would regard this as megalomania, born of some mad desire to play goddess. But it's nothing of the sort. The Rani has been worshipped as a goddess, and she finds it tedious. A necessary evil for a scientist who requires unquestioningly obedient assistants and a large supply of sentient test subjects, no more. It matters little to her whether her creations ever become aware of her existence, never mind worshipping her as a divinity. Indeed, she may regard the experiment as a failure should they prove capable of entertaining such foolish concepts.

She _will_ admit that part of her motivation lies in the sheer scale of the task. She has always liked a scientific challenge, and the greater the challenge, the greater the satisfaction in meeting it. What could be more challenging than an attempt to re-shape the very history of life in the cosmos? But for the most part, her reasons are more... aesthetic. If the universe can be made more sensible, more scientific, then surely it _should_ be?

And, despite one or two technical hurdles still to be overcome, she is confident that it _can_ be. She will use the best of this universe's feeble and messy brains to assist in the birth of their own superior replacements. A very tidy circularity, she thinks, a fitting demonstration of the power of intellect. It will be, as the humans of Earth would put it, a triumph of mind over matter.

Earth. Yes, she believes she will begin with Earth. Of all the planets in the cosmos, that one may well be the messiest, both biologically and otherwise. If she can succeed with Earth, the rest of the universe should follow with little difficulty. Perhaps she will start with the dinosaurs; she's always had something of a soft spot for the cold-blooded creatures. An irrational preference, true, but one she can see no reason not to indulge. After all, she lives in a universe that coddles and indulges irrationality. If only for a little while yet.


End file.
